You can't walk alone. Many have given the illusion, but none have really walked alone. Man is not made that way. Each man is bedded in his people, their history, their culture, and their values.
Don't ask to live in tranquil times. Literature doesn't grow there.
More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to.
A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress.
Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding.
Every burned book enlightens the world.
Culture is a little like dropping an Alka-Seltzer into a glass - you don't see it, but somehow it does something.
Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of.
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
The poets' scrolls will outlive the monuments of stone. Genius survives; all else is claimed by death.
My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.
The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.